20-year-old gets life for raping Tulane employee

A unanimous Orleans Parish jury Friday convicted a 20-year-old man of aggravated rape and armed robbery in connection with the daytime attack on a woman in her office on the Tulane University campus in 2005.

Tyrone Wilson, 18 at the time of the rape on June 19, 2005 inside an office building at Tulane, will receive the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole for the rape charge. Judge Arthur Hunter will formally sentence Wilson in February. Armed robbery carries 10 to 99 years.

After about two hours of deliberations Friday afternoon, the jury of seven men and five women returned two guilty-as-charged verdicts, relying solely on the testimony of the victim, now 52, who on Thursday recalled in excruciating detail how Wilson and Hampton Frankin, 20, broke into her office at about 1 p.m. that Sunday, Father's Day, sporting guns and vulgarities as they raped her orally, vaginally and anally.

Franklin is scheduled for trial on the same charges next month.

Without any scientific evidence pointing to Wilson, the jury relied on the victim's harrowing testimony. The Times-Picayune does not identify victims of rape.

"It's something that needed to be done," the victim said moments after the verdict was read at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. "I needed to tell my story. I'm thankful the jury believed me."